Can paper be folded in half ten times?

[provenlogic]

Does using a steamroller count as "you" folding?

Does "mashed into oblivion" count as "folded"?

Seriously, does 'folded' entail the ability to be UNfolded? I think it does.

There was no "you" in the question, just "Can paper be folded in half more than 'X' times."

The paper was not "mashed into oblivion", if you can find a clip of the show on youtube, the paper they folded was very much intact, undamaged, and not squashed into oblivion.

And folded simply means folded. Again, it doesn't say "folded and unfolded". And that's besides the point, because it could have been unfolded just fine, as it wasn't damaged.

 

[Críostóir]

OK, now you're being silly. When people say "a piece of paper" they don't mean a specially made superlong, super thin thing. They mean Letter, Legal, or A4 (or something similar).

And when they say "folded" they don't mean with a steamroller.

The Mythbusters demonstration is absolute nonsense. Gee, let's call a red-hot iron bar a "piece of paper."

The point of telling kids that a piece of paper can't be folded in half 10 times is to give them a physical perception of the power of exponentiation. The Mythbusters demo is a stupid, stupid way of trying to disable this valuable teaching tool. FUCK the Mythbusters until they bleed and die!

*deep breath*

OK, the way to do this is to tell the child "See this piece of paper? I'm going to fold it in half." *fold it in half* "Now I'm going to fold it in half again." *folds the resulting doubled halfsheet in half* "OK, that's twice. Do you think you can get to ten? You do? Here, try."

After the child tries and fails, you explain that any number doubled 10 times is a very big number.

The trouble with things like Mythbusters is that they don't understand the purposes these things have, and go to ridiculous extremes to disprove them. It's fundamentally a deeply stupid thing to do.

I picture them deciding to disprove "Birds of a feather stick together," and pointing out that no two birds actually share a single feather. Then they superglue two birds to a single big feather, and they either kill each other or tear out their own feathers trying to get separated. The Mythbusters then pronounce the slogan disproven.

Sound stupid? It's no stupider than using a steamroller to "fold" a piece of paper.

 

[LarsVenice]

I could only fold it six times. I agree that the steamroller folding is not really folding - it's steamrolling.

 

[SantaCBear]

OK, now you're being silly. When people say "a piece of paper" they don't mean a specially made superlong, super thin thing. They mean Letter, Legal, or A4 (or something similar).

And when they say "folded" they don't mean with a steamroller.

The Mythbusters demonstration is absolute nonsense. Gee, let's call a red-hot iron bar a "piece of paper."

The point of telling kids that a piece of paper can't be folded in half 10 times is to give them a physical perception of the power of exponentiation. The Mythbusters demo is a stupid, stupid way of trying to disable this valuable teaching tool. FUCK the Mythbusters until they bleed and die!

*deep breath*

OK, the way to do this is to tell the child "See this piece of paper? I'm going to fold it in half." *fold it in half* "Now I'm going to fold it in half again." *folds the resulting doubled halfsheet in half* "OK, that's twice. Do you think you can get to ten? You do? Here, try."

After the child tries and fails, you explain that any number doubled 10 times is a very big number.

The trouble with things like Mythbusters is that they don't understand the purposes these things have, and go to ridiculous extremes to disprove them. It's fundamentally a deeply stupid thing to do.

I picture them deciding to disprove "Birds of a feather stick together," and pointing out that no two birds actually share a single feather. Then they superglue two birds to a single big feather, and they either kill each other or tear out their own feathers trying to get separated. The Mythbusters then pronounce the slogan disproven.

Sound stupid? It's no stupider than using a steamroller to "fold" a piece of paper.

Depends...

Teaching kids to 'think outside the box' is important also.

 

[tze100]

I heard on a kid show, you can't.

Oh well.

Me too, I am so massively disappointed with How2 now, I wonder how much else of my childhood-acquired trivia is false...

 

[micah-much]

Sound stupid? It's no stupider than using a steamroller to "fold" a piece of paper.

I do believe one of the boys managed to get 8 folds folds with a larger piece of tracing paper; so the theory was marginally disproved (as the original theory was more than 7 times). But in typical mythbuster fashion, they decided to take it a step further, and went to the extremes that they did.

Your interpretation of "a piece of paper" is just that, an interpretation. The paper you deal with on a day to day basis is obviously going to influence what you interpret as a "normal" piece of paper.